By Louis Nixon

The Hammers are set to take on Spurs in search of their first Premier League London derby win this season, but given the past results, can West Ham actually take the fight to Spurs? 

Whilst our form as of late may look poor, in all honesty, the answer is yes. Form goes out the window when it comes to a derby and especially for this game. 

Both West Ham and Spurs have had dismal seasons so far, unfortunately for us, we’ve had a lot worse of a season than them, but make no mistake, both sides have been very poor.

Some people could even go as far to say that both managers could be on the verge of being sacked, but in this case, it seems more that Thomas Frank is in pressure in comparison to Nuno, even given the league position. 

This will be a difficult match for both sides, but certainly crucial. The Hammers are dire for a win, we have to win this game, we’ve recently failed to have any enthusiasm to get a result over the line, but if the players and Nuno don’t have enthusiasm for the biggest London derby of our season, then we certainly have no hope of getting a result elsewhere which will lead to our imminent downfall and setback to the Championship. 

Against Nottingham Forest, Nuno and his side actually put up a good fight, and despite the loss, the performance didn’t scream poor. We were just extremely unfortunate, especially seeing as how after the game, it was noticed that the goals might not been counted on another day!

But if you consider the performance, as well as the confidence from the QPR victory in the FA Cup alongside a favourable draw in the 4th Round, these events might add up to a bigger factor where we could channel this confidence into a victory against Spurs, a side who have already been knocked out of the cup and are clearly there for the taking. 

It’ll certainly be a tough game and at times, could definitely be boring given how both managers play a dull, gloomy style, but whether we win 1-0 or 5-0, it would equal three points, which is exactly what we need at this moment in time. 

Nottingham Forest play at 17:30 against Arsenal on the same day, which does give us an outside chance to reduce the gap down to four points and if we could do that, we might have three games in a row worth of aspects of confidence which we could take into the remainder of the season, something Leeds did which has almost taken them completely out the relegation conversation.